One cannot help but marvel (cough cough) when pondering how far popular culture has come and how much more visually sophisticated the “Transformers” franchise has grown over the decades.

Generations have literally never outgrown this.

Toys that first inspired a 1984 TV show, revived on the small screen and then Michael Bay’d to the big screen in 2007, movies and billions of box office dollars later and the robots have a metallic CGI sheen and their brawls a visual coherence that far exceeds anything Bay was able to do in the past.

In “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” you might actually believe a transforming robotic Fairchild Flying Boxcar plane like the one used in “Flight of the Phoenix” lands at the base of the Machu Picchu World Heritage site, that Autobots and Maximals (robotic animals) battle sinister Terrocons in the Peruvian Andes.

Real stunt drivers barreling about in a Freightliner semi, a Porsche 964, a ’70s Camaro, a Ducati 916 motorcycle and a 1970ish TV Microbus are seamlessly blended into those machines transforming into sentient, armed and armored robotic knights, battling evil to save themselves and prevent the world or the universe from ending, I forget which.

But oh my God these pictures are stupid and getting dumber and more derivative by the installment. Even by empty summer popcorn pic standards, stupid.

Five credited screenwriters and the director of “Creed II” tackled the “new” origin “story” of how the Maximals — robotic apes, cheetahs, eagles and rhinos — and Autobots were run off of their planet Cybertron, hiding out on Earth until 1994 when this magical “transportal key” thingy is uncovered inside The Maltese Falcon, and coveted by a new planet-consuming threat — Unicron — and hunted by his robotic lieutenant Scourge (voiced by Peter Dinklage) and Scourge’s minions deep into the heart of Indiana Jones South America.

You’d think the writers were struggling to make an original (fat chance), compelling, witty and emoptional movie out of a line of toys or something. And yes, they make it look…as hard as it no doubt was.

The human elements in these stories have become more and more of an afterthought. Humans are the ones who are “more than meets the eye,” here. Perhaps because these movies aren’t bothering to cast the likes of Shia and Megan and The Artist Formerly Known as Marky Mark, Josh Duhamel et al. There’s no cachet to being in a “Transformers” movie. Just cash.

Here, Anythony Ramos of “In the Heights” plays an unemployed ex-GI conned into trying to steal the Porsche that turns out to be the Autobot Mirage (Pete Davidson). Dominique Fishback of “The Hate You Give” and “Judas and the Black Messiah” plays an archeological intern at a New York museum who is handy to have around when ancient texts need translating.

They take a back seat in most scenes, some more than others.

Oscar winner Michele Yeoh and Ron Perlman now adorn the voice cast, with the Liam Neesonesque tones of the Canadian Peter Cullen being the one and only Optimus Prime, the idealistic leader always sacrificing himself for his kind, or our kind, in most of these pictures.

The jokes are the usual Bumblebee blurbs from movies — “You can’t HANDLE the truth” and “I came here to Kick Ass” — and Optimus complaining “I don’t want you to go to that drive-in theater any more.”

Pete Davidson goes after that PG-13 rating once or twice.

The violence is cartoonish and make-believe, with the occasional machine-beheading or impaling to give the fights some edge.

And it’s harmless enough, just noisy, jokey robotic mayhem beloved by going on three generations now.

But the half-hearted attempts to build a hero’s quest story about these increasingly collectible toys and ongoing campaign to wash the humanity right out of the franchise is something all the shiny, tactile and identifiable Freightliner, Porsche or Ducati parts in humanoid robotic form cannot hide.

They’re still just selling toys, kids.

Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and language

Cast: Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback and the voices of Michele Yeoh, Ron Perlman, Pete Davidson, Peter Dinkage, Liza Koshy and Peter Cullen.

Credits: Directed by Steven Caple Jr., scripted by Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, Josh Peters, Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber, based on the Hasbro toys, the TV show based on the toys and the earlier movies based on the toys. A Paramount release.

Running time: 2:07

Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and language

Cast: Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback and the voices of Michele Yeoh, Ron Perlman, Pete Davidson, Peter Dinkage, Liza Koshy and Peter Cullen.

Credits: Directed by Steven Caple Jr., scripted by Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, Josh Peters, Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber, based on the Hasbro toys, the TV show based on the toys and the earlier movies based on the toys. A Paramount release.

Running time: 2:07